Antony Green's Election Blog

Below the Line Preference Flows at the 2013 WA Senate Election

Last year's Senate election saw the final members elected in each state largely determined by complex preference deals. Arranging and delivering on these Senate preference deals was made possible by the use of group ticket or 'above the line' voting. With more than 95% of all voters using the group ticket voting option, the power over preferences was delivered into the hands of the small number of people who arranged the preference deals between the parties.

Those preference deals meant that some candidates of parties with little first preference support managed to be elected almost entirely thanks to engineered preference deals.

The most dramatic examples were the preference 'harvesting' operations that allowed Ricky Muir of the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party to win from 0.5% of the vote in Victoria, and the remarkable victory of Wayne Dropulich from the Australian Sports Party in Western Australia having polled only 0.23% of the first preference vote.

Both men owe their victories entirely to ticket voting. Were Senate elections conducted like House elections, with voters required to complete their own preferences, then neither man would have been elected. Only group ticket voting makes it possible for micro-parties to control their preferences tightly enough to engineer the election of candidates from such low first preference votes.

With Western Australia going to the polls at a Senate election re-run this Saturday, it is interesting to ask what last September's preference flows would have been like without group ticket voting?

One way to answer the question is to look at the ballot papers of those voters who did not use the 'above the line' option, voters who filled in their own preferences for candidates 'below the line'.

For this purpose I have undertaken research analysing all ballot papers completed below the line at last year's WA Senate election. The research reveals parties that voters see as having ideological affinities with each other. It also reveals parties for which below the line preferences were at odds with preference orderings on party group ticket votes.

The key findings of the research are that

Labor and Green voters see a clear affinity between the their parties, and Coalition supporters see a similar affinity between the Liberal and National parties.

Voters for several small left parties saw a clear affinity between their parties and the Greens, while amongst Christian based parties there was a clear clustering of support amongst voters for Family First, the Australian Christians and Rise Up Australia.

Voters seemed to see no clear affinity between the Palmer United Party and other major parties. This suggests support for Palmer United last September was part protest and drawn equally from other parties, and also suggests that voters had no perception of a particular ideological bent to the party.

While eighteen small parties delivered 100% of above the line preferences to the Sports Party, only 13% of people who voted for the same parties below the line gave preferences to the Sports Party, highlighting how preference harvesting was responsible for the Sports Party's success.

Comparing above and below the line preferences highlights several parties who gave strategic preferences to parties with which below the line voters saw no political affinity.

The data used in the study was the electronic versions of 50,131 ballot papers admitted as formal to last year's re-count. Formality rules mean that not all of those ballot papers had complete sequences of preferences from 1 to 62. There were 43,511 ballot papers with a complete sequence and another 6,620 included in the count but with breaks or duplications in the preference sequence. The data does not include any informal ballot papers.

Analysing the ballot papers for preference flows requires me to simplify the data to concentrate on parties and groups rather than candidates. I also have to make several definitions to explain preference flows.

I use the term 'home group' to define the first preference of a ballot paper, an 'immediate next preference' to classify what a voter did with their next preferences after the home group, and an 'effective preference' to classify which party a ballot paper potentially reached towards the end of the distribution of preferences. I compare how flows revealed as immediate and effective preferences compared with the same information for the lodged group ticket votes.

Reducing the analysis to parties and groups rather than candidates is backed by the manner in which people completed their ballot papers. The overwhelming majority of voters gave first preference for lead candidates in each group, and most voters also gave preferences for all candidates in their home group before moving on to another group.

Fairly obviously I define the home group for a ballot paper as being the group for which the ballot paper's first preference is indicated. I make no distinction between which candidate in the group received the first preference as my interest is only in the home group.

Having defined each ballot paper's home group, the immediate next preference is the first number in a preference sequence that is not for a candidate in the home group. So if you voted 1 and 2 for the candidates in column A, and then 3 for a candidate in Column B, then the immediate next preference is for Column B. The overwhelming majority of below the line voters number all candidates in the home group before giving a preference to a candidate in another group. I make no distinction between voters who number all candidates in a group and those who leave the group 'early'.

As I will explain below, the concept of home groups and immediate next preferences reveal two types of preferential relationships on a ballot paper.

I call the most important of these an affinity preference, a preference that is indicated by such a large proportion of home group's ballot papers that it must indicate that voters saw some affinity between their preferred party and the party they gave an immediate preference to.

Another type of preference I find is what I call a proximity preference, a weaker preference flow than an affinity preference, which appears to relate to the physical structure of the ballot, specifically the proximity of two groups to each other on what was a large ballot paper.

The table below sets out data on the strongest flows of immediate next preferences for each home group on the ballot paper. The table has been ordered in descending vote order and the columns in the table are -

Column 1 - the group code representing the left to right ordering of groups. There were 28 groups listed from A to Z followed by AA then Ungrouped.

Column 2 - the percentage of first preference vote for the group/party

Column 3 - the party name of the group

Column 4 - the number of 'below the line' first preference votes for the party. These are the 'home group' votes for the party.

Column 5 - the number of below the line votes for a party expressed as a percentage of all votes for the party. As the table shows, the proportion of below the line votes varied greatly between parties.

Column 6 - the percentage of immediate next preference for other parties. All preference flows of more than 10% are shown in the table. The asterisk '*' highlights parties receiving preferences that were within three columns of the home group on the ballot paper.

Clearly the above table highlights that many voters see ideological affinities between certain parties. Liberal voters prefer Nationals, Nationals prefer Liberals, Labor voters prefer the Greens and vice versa. The three Christian values parties, Family First, Australian Christians and Rise Up Australia, all have strong flows of preferences to each other from below the line voters operating with no assistance from how-to-vote cards.

Several parties with small vote tallies also demonstrate affinity preference flows. Katter's Australian Party voters clearly preferred Palmer United. Voters for Wikileaks, Socialist Equality, Australian Democrats, Australian Independents and Animal Justice delivered strong flows of preferences to the Greens. There is also some affinity between the Sex Party and HEMP, though proximity on the ballot paper may have increased this preference flow.

Very interestingly, two of the higher polling parties in Palmer United and the Liberal Democrats appear to have no particular affinities to other parties on the ballot paper. Neither party produced a significant preference flow to another party, very different from all of the other high polling parties on the ballot paper.

With Palmer United Party, does this reveal that the party attracted its support from across the political spectrum? Or does it reveal that the party is so new that those who voted for it had no particular view on which other parties on the ballot paper had an affinity to Palmer United? Does it reveal that voters have a blurred view of the party's ideology?

Another point with the Liberal Democrat vote is the very low percentage of below the line voting. Only 1.4% of Liberal Democrat votes were below the line, more like the rates recorded for the Labor and Liberal parties and substantially different from the higher rate of below the line voting for every other minor party. Similar low rates of below the line voting for the Liberal Democrats were seen in other states. The low rate of below the line voting for the Liberal Democrats is another piece of evidence that voters confused the Liberal Party and the Liberal Democrats.

An interesting finding in the table is that 38.2% preference flow from Smokers Rights in Column A to the Liberal Democrats in Column B. While these two parties are closely related, this would not be well known to voters. This flow represents the peculiarly Australian phenomena of the 'donkey vote', a simple left-to-right ordering of preferences.

Similar preference flows caused by the structure of the ballot paper appears towards the bottom of the table, where parties with low votes revealed only weak preference flows. The lower the vote for a party, the more it seems that proximity preferences are in play, voters numbering their home group and then carrying on in a nearby column.

A point I need to repeat is that below the line voters had no guide as to how they should distribute preferences. Voters made up their own mind with no how-to-vote cues, relying instead on their perceptions of the parties. That is why I talk of affinity preference flows, as such flows indicate a significant numbers of voters for home groups such as Labor, Liberal, National and Green, having a perception of an ideologically similar party to preference next. The preference flows reveal how voters perceive parties to be related.

It is possible to compare the affinity preference flows with the immediate next preferences of each party's group voting ticket. For the Labor, Liberal and National Parties, the immediate next preferences on their group ticket vote were for the Greens, National and Liberal Parties respectively, in line with below the line affinities. The Green group ticket vote was quite different, inserting nine minor parties including the Sports Party before reaching Labor. Clearly the Green group ticket vote had a strategic element to its ordering.

The problem with the Senate ticketing system is it encourages such strategic preference orderings. If parties were instead trying to influence voters with how-to-vote cards, then much simpler and ideologically more consistent preference orderings would be chosen.

Ticket voting encourages such game playing, most spectacularly in the case of preference-harvesting by micro-parties, where any ideological content in a group preference ticket is abandoned to enter the lottery of strategic preference designed to corral preferences in the hope they can be accumulated to reach a quota.

One way of examining where group ticket preferences are strategic is to compare where the group ticket votes finish at the end of the count compared to the preference affinities of below the line votes.

To do this I need to define an effective preferences. An effective preference is one for a candidate who remains in the race for a final vacancy at the end of the count. Because of nearly complete compulsory preferential voting, at some point all ballot papers reach one of the small number of candidates competing for the final seats.

In the case of the 2013 WA Senate election, I have chosen five candidates as producing effective preferences. These were the five candidates competing for the final three seats in WA last September. These candidates were the Liberal Party's third candidate Linda Reynolds, Labor's second candidate Louise Pratt, and the lead candidates for the Greens, Scott Ludlam, Palmer United's Zhenya Wang, or the Australian Sports Party's Wayne Dropulich.

The intricacies of the count mean you cannot say a ballot paper's preference reached an effective preference. Green preferences were never distributed, so the party's effective preference for Wayne Dropulich ahead of other candidates never came into play. The order that candidates were excluded also meant it was not possible for both the Sports Party and Palmer United to be present together at the end of the count, as both parties relied on each other for preferences to win election.

But the fact you can state where a party's effective preference would have reached compared to the effective preferences of below the line votes is revealing of where parties lodged group ticket votes with a strategic rather than a preferred preference ordering.

The table below compares the above and below the line effective preferences for the parties of the five candidates I defined above. The structure of the table means that effective preferences for these five parties must be for one of the other four parties, which explains the zero entries in the table.

BTL

Percentage Effective Preferences for BTL Votes

Home Group

Ticket Effective Preference

Votes

LIB

ALP

GRN

PUP

SPRTS

Exhaust

Liberal

Dropulich - Sports Party

6329

..

15.9

15.2

42.7

23.1

3.0

Labor

Ludlam - Greens

8342

8.0

..

65.8

14.3

9.8

2.1

Greens

Dropulich - Sports Party

14361

5.3

74.2

..

10.0

8.7

1.8

Palmer United

Ludlam - Greens

2659

25.7

18.8

26.9

..

24.6

4.0

Sports Party

Wang - Palmer United

131

22.9

17.6

31.3

24.4

..

3.8

Some key points about this table are -

The exhausted votes represents the small number of ballot papers permitted to remain in the count despite having gaps or duplications in their sequence. These ballot paper are put aside without having finally reached a candidate.

The earlier table revealed a strong affinity preference for the National Party amongst Liberal voters. The entry in the above table skips this affinity preference as the lead National candidate has not been defined as one of the effective preferences.

Labor's ticket preference for Scott Ludlam corresponded to two-thirds of the preference of below the line votes. Labor's ticket had a preference that matched the affinity perceived by below the line voters.

Three quarters of Green below the line voters had an affinity preference for the Labor Party, but this was not reflected on the Greens group ticket vote preference ordering, which had a strategic preference for the Sports Party ahead of Labor. It should be pointed out that while the Green ticket had this theoretic preference for the Sports Party, the preference was in fact never used because no Green preferences were distributed.

Below the line Palmer United and Sports Party preferences have little structure in the direction. As displayed in the earlier table of immediate preferences, low polling parties or parties with no clear ideological position do not see strong flows of below the line preferences to another party.

The next table shows the below the line effective preferences of the 18 minor and micro parties that helped elect the Sport Party with their group ticket vote. As the table shows, the below the line preference flows for Sports Party feeder parties were sometimes very different from the lodged ticket.

BTL

Percentage Effective Preferences for BTL Votes

Home Group

% Vote

Votes

LIB

ALP

GRN

PUP

SPRTS

Exhaust

Liberal Democrats

3.43

628

28.7

6.5

14.8

35.8

8.4

5.7

Australian Christians

1.64

1823

55.1

10.3

7.8

18.0

7.0

1.8

Sex Party

1.49

1689

8.9

14.7

44.9

16.7

12.5

2.2

HEMP

1.07

1233

7.6

13.1

38.0

22.1

16.7

2.6

Shooters and Fishers

1.04

1036

24.9

10.5

5.3

27.9

28.8

2.6

Wikileaks

0.75

1638

9.1

14.3

47.9

19.7

7.6

1.4

Animal Justice

0.74

716

9.9

12.3

53.5

11.7

10.9

1.7

Smokers Rights

0.67

638

5.6

8.0

10.5

58.0

12.7

5.2

Family First

0.67

480

40.2

10.2

14.8

21.3

11.3

2.3

Motoring Enthusiasts

0.59

414

16.7

13.3

13.3

21.5

32.4

2.9

Fishing and Lifestyle

0.44

218

15.6

9.6

11.9

22.5

36.2

4.1

Australian Independents

0.31

354

7.3

9.6

45.5

22.0

11.9

3.7

Australian Democrats

0.29

575

10.3

19.8

52.5

11.1

5.6

0.7

Rise Up Australia

0.29

388

38.9

7.5

11.6

29.6

10.6

1.8

Stop the Greens

0.17

141

22.0

11.3

6.4

26.2

29.8

4.3

No Carbon Tax

0.11

92

37.0

10.9

18.5

21.7

8.7

3.3

Stable Population

0.10

312

20.8

12.2

37.5

17.6

9.6

2.2

Australian Voice

0.09

57

5.3

7.0

24.6

33.3

24.6

5.3

All 18 parties

12432

21.0

12.0

28.7

22.5

13.3

2.5

Several points need to be highlighted about the above table.

Voters for smaller parties tended to avoid the major parties. Strong flows of BTL preferences to major parties in the above table are very indicative of micro-parties lodging group ticket votes with strategic preferences rather preferences with an ideological affinity. Instances of this are highlighted in bold.

Australian Christian, Family First, No Carbon Tax and Rise Up Australia below the line voters clearly saw greater affinity with the Liberal Party than the strategic preference each party gave to the Sports Party.

Below the line voters for the Sex Party, HEMP, Wikileaks, Animal Justice, Stable Population, Australian Independents and Australian Democrats clearly saw a greater affinity with the Greens than their party's strategic preference for the Sports Party.

The 58.0% flow from Smokers Rights to Palmer United is largely the donkey vote, with the Liberal Democrats in Column B revealing a similar flow.

The alternative view that voters voted this way below the line in opposition to their party's lodged ticket seems unlikely given how few people examine the tickets. The one party where this may be the case is Wikileaks, where there was controversy of the ticket lodged by the party.

Finally, the table below shows the effective preferences for the five remaining groups on the ballot paper that did not direct preferences to the Sports Party.

Pct

BTL

Percentage Effective Preferences for BTL Votes

Home Group (Pct)

Ticket Effective Preference

Vote

Votes

LIB

ALP

GRN

PUP

SPRTS

Exhaust

National

Reynolds - Liberal

5.07

4405

42.1

14.0

19.7

16.2

6.6

1.4

Katter's Australia

Wang - Palmer United

0.30

401

16.2

9.0

12.0

54.4

7.0

1.5

Secular Party

Ludlam - Greens

0.11

485

11.1

13.0

58.8

9.9

6.0

1.2

One Nation - Ungrouped

None

0.03

422

24.6

10.9

12.6

29.6

19.7

2.6

Socialist Equality

Split ALP, LIB, GRN

0.03

164

3.7

11.0

57.9

17.1

9.8

0.6

Clearly the National Party, Katter's Australian Party and the Secular Party lodged party tickets that matched the expectations of below the line voters. The sole One Nation candidate had no group preference, while the Socialist Equality Party's decision to lodge three tickets splitting preferences equally between Labor, the Liberals and Greens, was completely at odds with what below the line voters thought of the parties.

So what can we draw from this analysis? The below the line data shows that voters for many parties saw clear ideological affinities between their first preference party and other parties on the ballot.

If group ticket voting were abolished and optional preferential voting either above or below the line introduced, then parties would issue how-to-vote material recommending preferences. You would expect parties to select sequences in line with the ideological affinities perceived by voters, and less likely to adopt strategic preference flows.

Recommending a strategic preference for a micro-party would be a waste of time for a major party if ticket voting was abolished, as the micro-party would be unable to deliver on its end of the strategic preference deal.

Most of the findings outlined in this post concerning larger parties are relatively obvious - the affinity preferences between the parties make ideological sense. The lack of affinity preference in the Palmer United below the line vote is an unusual finding, but makes sense if you view the party as a new entrant campaigning with anti-major party rhetoric.

The key finding though is how many group ticket votes of minor and micro parties are completely at odds with the preferences revealed in the below the line preferences flows. In particular, that 18 parties delivered 100% of above the line preferences to the Sports Party, but only 13% of below the line voters, is revealing in how much group ticket voting allows Senate election results to be manipulated by labyrinthine preference deals.

Comments

A very interesting article Antony.

I've always voted BTL either to reorder a major party ticket or support a minor party, and to ensure I determine my preference flow. This has never been simple for the Senate, but I've found the http://www.belowtheline.org.au site very useful in 2013 and for this year's WA Senate election. The print your own voting guide facility will be particularly useful with the number of candidates this year.

The introduction of optional preferential voting would be a major step forward, as would electronic voting if it facilitated a view of the BTL result when an Above the Line vote was selected - if voters could then edit the BTL flow the preference deals would lose their impact.

COMMENT: The answer is simply to get rid of the tickets and simplify the voting system, which means voters would have a better chance of understanding what they are doing.

- Frank F - Kalamunda April 04, 2014 at 12:54 PM

I work in IT with similar complexity data sets and I have been thinking about the problem of preference flows not following voters desires.

Could the above the line votes just treat the below the line votes as the tickets for distribution? In other words each below the line vote if distributed would have a number of above the line votes "piggy-backing" it.

eg. based on the WA data above Liberal BTL votes get 83.333 piggy-backers and Green BTL votes get only 8.696 piggy backers.

The main advantages of this method is the same ballot paper and voting method could be used reducing voter re-education costs and initial voter error. I'm sure there must be some problem/disadvantage to this method I cannot see and I would appreciate if you point me in it's direction.

COMMENT: The solution is clearly to simplify the voting system. The most likely option is to allow optional preferential voting above the line for parties and abolish the tickets altogether.

This is a bit off-topic, but I've looked at the SA Legislative Council's full distribution of preferences. It appears that the Nick Xenophon group did much better than the ABC calculator output suggested they would. They were actually less than 300 votes behind Shooters &amp; Fishers when one of those had to be excluded. As it was, Xenophon was excluded, electing both Labor and Family First to the final two seats.

If S &amp; F had been excluded at that point instead, I think Family First and the 2nd Xenophon person would have been elected. Is this right?

Thanks for this post and the Blog in general Antony. I ran 4 simulations through your calculator this morning and came up with your conclusion the first two times. Trying to get the Greens elected I attempted again and managed to oust a Labor position and replace it with a HEMP candidate. I finally at my fourth attempt got the Greens in at the expense of Pratt, but to do that the Labor vote really needs to collapse through low voter turn out. Interesting and fun to do. Thanks again.

- Paul Gruyters April 04, 2014 at 02:28 PM

Rightly or wrongly; I am absolutely certain that the abolition of Group Ticket voting - replacing it with OPV ATL will also ensure far less micro-parties even bother to go to the trouble of nominating in future elections.

This is because the power to conjure that 6th Senate seat has been taken from them and handed back to the voters.

I hope that Government enquiry into all matters relating to the 2013 election recommends this change to the electoral process.

I tried to perform the same kind of analysis on the Victorian Senate Ticket - distributing preferences by ignoring the group ticket votes and multiplying the value of the BTL votes accordingly.

My result ended up electing Susan Kroger to the #6 senate spot for Victoria instead of Ricky Muir who was eliminated quite early in my count.

Antony, Are you planning to perform a similar exercise with the other State senate counts to see who would and wouldn't have been elected if Group Ticket Voting was not permitted?

- Jeff April 04, 2014 at 02:35 PM

The Socialist Equality Party lodged its three-way preference split because it was trying to ensure its preferences played no part in the outcome. This cannot be fully accomplished, but the approach they adopted was the one that came closest to achieving their objective. Individual voters who vote below the line cannot do this and have to make a choice. The study revealed that, when the choice is forced, over half of SEP voters opt for the Greens over the other parties nominated. I don't find this surprising.

- Greg Platt April 04, 2014 at 02:42 PM

What you havent taken into account is that some voters dont vote BTL to show some 'affinity' for what party candidates they roughly put 1st and 2nd ... it is the party candidates they put 1st and LAST that count. Many of my friends claim to do this - they put their party candidates 1st and Greens LAST.... that way the Greens will be the last to get their vote, if they can help it.

COMMENT: I don't have to take it into account. The last preference on a ballot paper is never counted as the preference is never reached. On my tables of effective preferences using your example, such a vote will always be for one of the other parties as all those other parties are reached before the Greens.

Next week I will probably publish tables of the last preference given for each first preference, but such a table is meaningless in working out where a party's preferences get to, because the last preference can never be reached.

- Matt G April 04, 2014 at 07:32 PM

As more people might be voting below the line this election, can you confirm, as per your article last year, that a person can vote both above and below the line? I.e. If your below the line voting declared invalid, your "1" above the line will be considered your vote.

AEC, of course, say you can only vote above OR below the line. Thx.

COMMENT: A vote marked above and below the line is formal, and after the re-count last year, any returning officer who doesn't know that should be sacked.

- E April 04, 2014 at 09:12 PM

"Recommending a strategic preference for a micro-party would be a waste of time for a major party if ticket voting was abolished, as the micro-party would be unable to deliver on its end of the strategic preference deal."

1. Given the high below-the-line voting for a micro-party compared with a major party isn't this statement already relevant?

2. Many preference deals seem to be between upper and lower house, rather than within the upper house, although this is usually between major and minor rather than major and micro parties. In this case wouldn't abolishing ticket voting mean that the major party would be unable to deliver votes to the minor party in the upper house whilst, because of the much smaller choice and a more effective How-to-Vote card, the minor party would be able to deliver votes to the major party in the lower house?

COMMENT: (1) - no, because 13% of a 5-10% BTL vote plus 100% of 90-95% ATL is vastly different from 13% of 100% of all votes. (2) A lot of micro-parties contesting lower houses are trying to get their Senate vote just that little bit higher, making it more likely they will stay in the count through the preference harvesting process. Abolish the tickets, preference harvesting stops, the floods of lower house candidates are also diminished.

- Dennis Matthews April 04, 2014 at 09:56 PM

The issue of voting both above and below the line is interesting.

In the SA elections the SA Electoral Commission has separately counted not only above and below the line but also those below the line votes that stayed below the line and those that were moved to above the line.

I assume the latter was done when the below the line voting was ambiguous or didn't fill in all the boxes or missed out a number.

This shows that voting only below the line can be no better and sometimes worse than voting above the line simply because the chances of making a mistake are high. Doing both is a belt and braces strategy but doing just below the line risks an informal vote.

COMMENT: All electoral acts include a provision that deals with votes marked above and below the line. The Commonwealth Electoral Act allows up to three errors and also requires only 90% of square to be filled. The SA Act requires all squares to be filled and no errors are permitted.

- Dennis Matthews April 05, 2014 at 12:24 PM

I think that if ticket votes are eliminated, parties will still exert significant influence on preferences via their "how-to-vote" leaflets.

How much influence is an interesting question. Obviously current below-the-line voters are less likely to follow a how-to-vote, but the big variable is how many current above-the-line voters would be prepared to do their own thing if it becomes easier as a result of (1) being able to preference above-the-line and (2) less candidates as the micro-parties fall away.

I agree that many of the micro-parties will go away without ticket votes because they won't be able to influence preferences AT ALL, because they don't have a real movement from which to draw volunteers to hand out how-to-votes.

The few genuine micro-parties that do tend to be represented at polling booths (I certainly saw the Socialist Alliance at mine back in September, there may have been one or two others) will likely still contest, and I think that's a good thing, as they're in it for the right reason.

- Alaric April 05, 2014 at 07:17 PM

Interesting stuff. You must have put a lot of work into that. Thanks. Two minor comments, but first I should declare that I started the Liberal Democrats so I'm a bit biased.

(1) I don't doubt that there was some Liberal-LDP confusion, but I have another thesis that you might like to consider if/when you have the time. For some voters, I think LDP and Palmer fill a similar niche in the political marketplace. There seems to be some evidence for that in the BTL voting above as many LDP votes went to Palmer. I'd be curious if the reverse was also true. I note that the 2013 performance of LDP and Palmer in different states seem to be inversely related… with LDP doing relatively worse when Palmer does relatively better. I don't pretend this is the only factor, and I don't know if it's a big factor, but it seems like a logically coherent possibility with some anecdotal evidence.

(2) Again, I don't doubt that the donkey vote was an important element, but I suspect that at least some Smokers preferences flowed to the LDP on purpose. The SRP said in their campaign that they had an agreement with the LDP and were preferencing the LDP… and that makes a lot of sense in terms of policy. While many voters wouldn't have known that, I assume that BTL voters are relatively more informed so it is reasonable to expect that some of them would be aware of the link, approved of the link, and voted accordingly.

Obviously you have the data to say so definitively, but are people really donkey voting below the line - filling out the whole ballot paper starting at the top left and finishing at the bottom right? I find that incredible.

COMMENT: Yes, there are a small number of people doing it, and for parties in Column A with low votes, the donkey votes make up a disproportionate part of that small vote and it shows up in the preference flows.

Regarding Tim's comment on below-the-line donkey votes, I sorted the below-the-line data from 2013 and found that 52 people completed a full 1 to 62 donkey vote (groups in order, left-to-right).

A further 49 went as far as 1 to 10 through the ideological smorgasbord of Smoker's Rights-LDP-Australian Christians-HEMP-Socialist Equality. Some of these appear to have been attempted donkeys that got derailed later on by missing a number or poor handwriting, but would have still been valid votes up to the first skipped or repeated number.

- Alaric April 06, 2014 at 04:36 PM

Given how close Pratt is to getting a quota at the same time as PUP, do you the higher proportion of Labor BTL to Lib BTL could push her over the quota line? Could you analyse the 2013 BTL votes to a 2-party preferred case, an extension of your "effective prefference" investigation? For Pratt to make it, she needs to reach the quota at the same time as PUP, and not allow excess PUP votes to flow to the Libs.

COMMENT: Most of the Labor BTL votes are already included in the totals, so they can't improve Pratt's position.